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Taiwanese American Arts Council
House 17, Nolan Park, Governors Island, New York City
2026 Island Reverence-II
Season Finale 🌿
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Nina Edwards
Taiwan LV Bag: A journey to Liberty, 2026. Digital mixed media on canvas, 8.5 x11 in. Woven Across Time series
The Statue of Liberty and Taiwan’s iconic woven market bag—affectionately nicknamed the “Taiwan LV bag”—bring New York and Taiwan together, reflecting migration, cultural identity, resilience, and connections between two islands.
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Nikolina Kovalenko
Twilight Canyon, 2020. Oil on canvas, 54×80 in. Twilight Canyon immerses viewers in a dreamlike coral reef, where luminous colors and organic forms evoke the richness of underwater life while drawing attention to the growing fragility of coral ecosystems.
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🌿 PLANTS WHO SPEAK 🌿
Workshop & Ceremony with Jimena Vega
& Sarah Walko
📅 Saturday, October 3| 1:30–3:30 PM
📍 TAAC House 17, Nolan Park, Governors Island
What might plants tell us if we learn how to listen?
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Plants Who Speak explores our relationship with nature through walking, collecting, and creative practice. Participants will gather fallen leaves and natural materials from Governors Island to create botanical monotypes, using plants as both material and inspiration.
The individual prints will come together as a collective nature altar and ceremony, transforming plants, images, and experiences into a shared installation and inviting us to consider:
What might plants tell us if we learn how to listen?
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🎶 Duo Recital
Saturday October 3, 4 PM
Classical Guitar — Kyo Hyuk Lee
Violin — Hudson Ye Hyung Chung
| | | | Kyo Hyuk Lee is a classical guitarist known for his lyrical tone and refined musicality. A graduate of the Royal Conservatory of Madrid, he has performed at distinguished venues including CONDE DUQUE Cultural Center, the Spanish Embassy in Seoul, and the “Jose Luis Rodrigo” Festival in Spain. | | Hudson Ye Hyung Chung, violinist, made his debut with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra at age 11 and has since performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and major venues worldwide. Trained at Juilliard, Yale, New England Conservatory, and Boston University, he has collaborated with internationally renowned artists and conductors. In 2025, he was named Music Director of the Blairsville Chamber Music Festival. | | | |
🌳THE TREE OF LIFE 🌳
Painting Workshop led by artist Nikolina Kovalenko
📅 Saturday, October 10 | 1–2:30 PM
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The Tree of Life is a universal symbol found across mythology, religion, philosophy, and folklore. Often understood as a sacred or cosmic tree, it connects heaven, earth, and the underworld, symbolizing the interconnectedness of all life. Across cultures, it represents creation, renewal, fertility, knowledge, and immortality, reflecting humanity’s enduring relationship with nature and the spiritual world.
(RSVP through eventbrite)
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/tree-of-life-painting-workshop-tickets-2001112577588
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2026 Island Reverence — II
Season Finale: Thematic Exhibitions
📅 September 19 – November 1, 2026
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TAAC House 17 welcomes the final season of Island Reverence: Art, Ecology, and Community on Governors Island. Bringing together artists, open studios, installations, performances, and community programs, this final chapter celebrates our shared connections to art, nature, and one another.
Join us as we bring the 2026 season to a meaningful close!
| | Jeremiah Teipen, Always Controlled by What We Control is an interactive installation exploring how digital systems shape perception, behavior, and beliefs. Placing participants in a hybrid physical/virtual space, the work questions how technologies such as algorithmic prediction are reshaping our experience and understanding of reality. | | |
Leon Chuang,
The Shape of Home, 2026. lightbox and video,
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Chung-Ying Hou 侯忠頴
Botanical Thinking
《草木有思》, 2026
Site-specific installation
Handmade paper incorporating natural materials, including plant fibers, leaves, bark, and soil; produced through the artist's complete papermaking process.
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Christina Andersen
Hope Takes Flight, 2026
Dead wood, bronze, paint, wax, resin, water, tree branch from Governors Island. 12.5’ (H) × 6.5’ (W) × 4.5’ (D)
Inspired by Andersen’s experience caring for an injured hummingbird until it could fly again, Hope Takes Flight reflects on hope as something fragile that requires care and protection. The work especially honors the importance of nurturing children’s hope until it is strong enough to take flight.
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YuYu Demi Chen, 陳又瑜Metamorphosis of Two Islands, 2026
Site-specific installation
YuYu Chen transfers photographs of Taiwanese temple rituals onto fallen tree bark collected from Governors Island, connecting the physical traces of one island with the cultural memory of another.
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Chia-Wei Chang, 張家瑋2025-2026
Atayal Girl 泰雅族少女
72 x 48 in, oil on canvas
Atayal Girl brings together human life, animals, nature, and ancestry. The skeletal remains evoke traditional Atayal practices of burying the deceased beneath or near the home, suggesting an enduring connection between ancestors, the living, and the land.
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Ricardo Woo
AMIGOS E AMIGAS, 2026
Live portraiture and performative drawing
“The earth is what we all have in common.”
Amigos and Amigas celebrates friendship, human connection, and the encounters that bring people together. Through live portraiture and performative drawing, Ricardo Woo transforms the act of making a portrait into a shared experience between artist, sitter, and audience.
Each portrait begins with an individual encounter, yet together they form a collective image of a diverse community. Like travelers whose paths briefly cross, strangers become acquaintances, and acquaintances become amigos and amigas—friends sharing the same place and moment in time.
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Ming-Jer Kuo
Memento Mori: Starry Night from Six Feet Under
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Presents two site-specific installations by Ming-Jer Kuo: Urban Constellations, from his ongoing Cemetery Series, and Backtracking the Unseen, created from his archive of smartphone photographs. Together, the works explore mortality, memory, and the traces we leave behind.
In Urban Constellations, aerial images of nineteen New York City cemeteries transform tombstones into luminous points resembling constellations, creating a poetic view of a “starry night from six feet under.” In Backtracking the Unseen, hundreds of sky photographs taken since 2016 become a suspended, chandelier-like installation.
Moving between earth and sky, physical and digital memory, the works consider how unseen traces of our lives continue to remain present.
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Julia Hsia 夏小筑
Pending Pause,2026
2-min looping video
Site specific installation, jute twine, fabric, monitor
Pending Pause explores imposed borders. Humans construct boundaries to mark possession, secure resources, and claim rights. The installation offers viewers the illusion of access while simultaneously placing a barrier before them. It invites reflection on how human-made systems structure accessibility, establish boundaries, and categorize people, places, and other entities Suggestive of fences surrounding private property, restricted zones, or hazardous areas, the net represents separation and control. Yet nature resists such boundaries: it connects the world through movement.
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Lin Yi-Chi 林羿绮
+12 / −12, 2026.
Clock, transparency film print
Two clocks with inverted faces are placed side by side, connected by the image of the sea.
New York and Taipei are twelve hours apart: the numbers on the clocks are the same, yet one marks daylight while the other marks night.
The same time, at opposite ends of the sea, becomes two opposing moments of a day.
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Eun Young Choi, 2026,
Untitled (UW #1, #2, #3, #4), 2019.
Hand cut vinyl, silver mylar on board,
20 x 20 inches
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Kyunglim Lee
Reverence: Seven Sayings, 2025
Collage paper mounted on wood panels, dimensions variable
Lee translates the Last Seven Words of Jesus on the Cross into abstract visual forms, reflecting themes of love, justice, forgiveness, anguish, and redemption. Like composers who interpreted these sacred words through music, Lee expresses them through collage, material, and her own visual language.
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MARK YOUR CALENDAR!
October Programs at House 17
Saturday October 3, 2-3:30pm
🌿 CLIMATE WEEK NYC | PLANTS WHO SPEAK 🌿
Workshop & Ceremony with Jimena Vega & Sarah Walko
Saturday October 3, 4:00 PM
Classical Guitar & Violin Duet Performance
Kyohuk Lee & Hudson Y. Chung
Saturday October 10, 1:00-2:30 PM
🌳 CLIMATE WEEK NYC | THE TREE OF LIFE 🌳
Painting Workshop led by artist Nikolina Kovalenko
Saturday October 10, 3:30 PM
Julia Hsia Performance
Saturday October 17 2:00-6:00pm
Flyer:Oct 17 2-6pm Performance and Musical Act
2-3pm Stone Matsu: Interactive Performance by Hui-Ying Tsai
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Beginning at the northwest Governors Island ferry dock, Hui-Ying Tsai’s interactive performance will lead the audience across the island to TAAC House 17, 17 Nolan Park, where an afternoon of live music will follow.
3-6pm Musical Act organized by Jonathan Grover
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Musical Act 1-3:00-3:20pm: 85668232 (Glitch/Noise)
https://185668232.bandcamp.com/
- Musical Act 2-3:40-4:00pm:Trevor Deke Bajus & Jonathan Grover
Trio: Drums, Electric Bass, Guitar (KrautRock/Dub)
https://trevordekebajus.bandcamp.com/, https://jonathangrover.com/
- Musical Act 3-4:20-4:40pm: Theatre of Divine Resonance
Trio: Violin, Bass, and Electronics/Vocals (Drone/World Music)
https://theatreofdivineresonance.bandcamp.com/
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Musical Act 4-5:00-5:20pm: M.A.K.S. (Musically Advanced Kinetic Sculptures)
Solo: Electronic Music/Vocals (Breakcore/Hiphop)
https://maks83.bandcamp.com/
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Musical Act 5- 5:40-6:00pm Tracy: Cregan
Solo: Electronic Music (Synth Pop/Experimental)
https://tracycregan.bandcamp.com/
Saturday-Sunday October 24–25
🎃 Pumpkin Point Weekend
- Trick or Treat, pick up your own pumpkin
Saturday October 24 2:00pm
Fashion Drawing workshop led by Nina Edwards
Saturday October 31 3:00pm
🎶 Kaju Roberto & Andy Lin
Duet Music Performance & Season Closing Reception
Join us at TAAC House 17 on Governors Island as we celebrate the final month of our 2026 season!
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"Forest Resonance" by Chih-Hui Chuang, was created from the trunk of a dried oak tree from Crystal Park. The tree - given a second life through art - as sculpture evokes the spirit of the forest and the healing energy of nature.
Now on view at TAAC House 17, Nolan Park, Governors Island, New York City.
| | Chin-Chih Yang site-specific installation on the porch | | |
Artist in residence
Studio Artists at TAAC House 17
September to October
Studio 1: Chia-Wei Chang & Mike Lin
Studio 2: Eun Young Choi
Studio 3: Yu-Yu Demi Chen
& ChrisTina Andersen & Wildriana Paulino
Studio 4: Nikolina Kovalenko
Studio 5: Kyunglim Lee
Take this opportunity to meet the artists, learn about their creative processes, and gain insight into the concepts behind their work. When you visit House 17, be sure to explore the second-floor studios and engage in conversation with the artists. We look forward to welcoming you!
Open Studio, Saturday and Sunday 11 AM–5 PM, or by appointment
TAAC House 17, Nolan Park, Governors Island
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TAAC on Governors Island, NYC
台美文藝協會
從島嶼到島嶼：
藝術、生態與文化交流
2026 House 17 Documentary film produce by ToIsland Production 透島影業
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TAAC 2026 Governors Island Documentary
4K two-channel video, color, sound, 8 min.
Beginning on Governors Island, this documentary traces TAAC’s 2026 Island Reverence: Art, Ecology, and Community program at House 17 through interviews with TAAC co-founders and board members, the chief curator, and participating House 17 artists.
Through the voices of artists and the TAAC community, the documentary captures House 17 as a meeting place where art, people, and island experiences come together.
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Studio 4:
Nikolina Kovalenko
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Studio 3:
Yu-Yu Demi Chen
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Studio 3:
ChriTina Andersen
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Studio 3:
Wildriana Paulino
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TAAC: 10 Years and Counting
A Journey Through Art
— Book Release
As this publication reflects upon ten years of exhibitions, residencies, institutional partnerships, and community engagement, it also situates TAAC within broader shifts in the art environments of both Taiwan and New York. Through the curatorial journey and career transitions of Luchia Meihua Lee—from museum leadership and cultural diplomacy to the founding of TAAC—the book traces the evolving networks, artistic movements, and diasporic flows that have shaped Taiwanese, Asian, and Chinese art communities across transnational contexts.
Extending back to the artistic climate of the 1970s and moving toward TAAC’s establishment in 2014 and its continued development, TAAC：10 Years and Counting documents not only programs and milestones, but also the changing cultural geography of contemporary art. It observes how Taiwanese art has evolved within Taiwan’s own shifting social and institutional landscape, while simultaneously examining its dialogue with New York’s multicultural art scene and the broader global discourse.
More than an anniversary record, this volume serves as both archive and reference— a resource for scholars, artists, and readers seeking deeper understanding of Taiwanese and Taiwanese American art communities, their diasporic trajectories, and their contributions to contemporary art history.
For inquiries or to reserve a copy, please contact info@taac-us.org.
The cover features Watch Us! Together We Can Do It by Taiwanese American artist Chin-Chih Yang.
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Support TAAC and Help Build the Future of Arts and Culture
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